She was about to leave herself when the door at the back of the room opened again and the constituency chairperson stuck his head out. Seeing her and also that the room was effectively empty, he scurried over.
“Um, Dr Hughes, glad I caught you. I wonder if you have a moment?”
She stood and followed him through the door to a small, spartan office where Mr and Mrs Savage sat. Whilst his wife was nursing a cup of tea, Callie could see that the MP had an amber liquid in his mug and a hip flask was on the table in front of him.
“Ah, thank you for coming, Dr Hughes.” Savage stood and indicated a chair for her to sit.
“I’ll get off now, Ted. Don’t you worry about Claybourne, he’s nothing but a windbag, he’ll lose his deposit if he stands against you.”
The thin man waved a vague goodbye and left the room, confirming Callie’s thoughts that Claybourne was planning a move to be the next MP. She sincerely hoped that Miller, or Trading Standards were able to link him to the cigarette smuggling and effectively end his political ambitions by putting him in jail. She didn’t like him one bit. Savage took a sip of his whisky and smiled at Callie.
“You must be wondering why I asked you to come this evening.”
“I have to admit, I was surprised.”
“It’s because you were right.” He looked at her intently. “And I wanted to come clean. Tell all.”
He almost seemed to be flirting with Callie which was strange as his wife was sitting next to her. Callie stole a quick look at the woman and could see that she wasn’t happy. Whether it was because her husband was flirting or because he was about to say something she didn’t approve of, Callie wasn’t sure.
Callie turned back to the MP and smiled encouragingly. She felt sufficiently sure that he wouldn’t pounce with his wife in the room, although, given some of the stories she had heard about politicians, perhaps that was naive of her.
“I did indeed give the reporter the question that I wanted him to ask.”
Callie and Mrs Savage both seemed to sigh with slight relief. Indeed, Mrs Savage seemed suddenly quite relaxed, compared to her normal rather uptight demeanour, and she even took a sip of tea.
“And why did you do that?” Callie asked him.
“Because I wanted to answer it.”
Callie felt that was a very inadequate reply.
“But you knew that the boat had not been sabotaged.”
“No, no, I had no information on its condition.”
Which was a typical politician’s answer, Callie thought, neither confirming nor denying.
“You had no reason to suspect that it had been damaged.”
“Well, you might say that, but it capsized, or sank, or whatever, so it might well have been sabotaged,” he said.
“Or it might just have been unseaworthy, or unsuitable for the conditions, and overloaded with people who had no idea about boats, navigation, tides or just how treacherous the sea can be.”
“It seems to me, that it amounts to much the same thing. Young men died and someone else was to blame.”
“Yes, but by suggesting the boat had been deliberately damaged, you implied that in some way, a far-right group, possibly even the FNM could have been responsible. You made out they were murderers,” Callie said.
“It is, I suppose, possible that people could have misinterpreted the situation, yes, and I must take the blame for that and the subsequent disruption of the FNM rally, I suppose. But I can’t say that I’m sorry. The whole reason they were having the rally was to celebrate the death of those men, and to capitalise on the situation. You can’t believe that was right.”
Callie held up her hands in mock surrender.
“Of course not! But your actions could have caused a riot. Could have got more people hurt or even killed.”
He waved away her concerns, dismissively.
“Dixon and Claybourne are just thugs. They might be a bit heavy-handed, but they wouldn’t want anything serious to happen. They’d never get elected if it did.”
Callie realised that he was disappointed about that. When he hinted at the FNM involvement in the deaths of the migrants in the interview, he had hoped there might be serious unrest at the rally and that maybe his actions would not just disrupt the proceedings, but also damage the political ambitions of the organisers.
“So why are you telling me all this?”
“I wanted you to understand what I was trying to do, and what the consequences of men like Claybourne and Dixon getting into power would be.”
“I know that already.”
“And that it’s important they are stopped.” He leant forward, eyes boring into her. “It’s important that the police do not take sides. You do realise that more anti-fascists were arrested at the rally than members of Dixon’s mob?”
“No,” she replied coolly, beginning to understand what he wanted from her.
“Of course, the police have a history of being−” He stopped, sensing she wasn’t happy with the way the conversation was going. “It would be good to know there was someone there who was putting the alternate view, who could remind them that they need to be impartial.”
There was no doubting his sincerity.
“Whilst I can assure you of my own impartiality,” she responded, “telling the police how they need to behave really isn’t my role.” And she stood up to leave, hoping that he took the
